


I Look at Her and I See

by Mireille



Series: You Are the Everything [1]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 01:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20349838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Carol Danvers is the best friend Maria's ever had. It turns out, that's not enough.





	I Look at Her and I See

****

Maria's so exhausted she doesn't think she can stand up. It's worse than basic training. It's not like the Air Force has slacked up on her at all, but now there's also Monica keeping her awake around the clock, because "sleeping through the night" is not a thing that her daughter believes in, even if all the baby books say she should have started months ago.

So when Danvers says, "You look like you're about to drop. I could come over and watch the baby so you can get a nap?" it's the greatest thing Maria has ever heard in her life. 

She doesn't know Danvers all that well. She's smart and determined and kind of a pain in the ass, but all of that would apply to any woman picked as a pilot for Project Pegasus. It definitely applies to Maria herself.

She also knows Danvers is offering to let Maria get some actual sleep, when she could be doing something fun on her day off, or even just catching up on her laundry. That makes her Maria's new favorite person.

"You know anything about kids?" she asks, and isn't surprised when Danvers shrugs. 

"They're small? Don't drop them? If they smell, change their diapers? If there's anything else, don't worry, I'm a fast learner."

Maria laughs. "Yeah, we can probably work with that."

****

Danvers--Carol--isn't terrible with kids, despite the fact that she holds Monica like she's going to break.

"She's not a newborn," Maria tells her. "She can walk. You're not going to hurt her by picking her up."

Monica demonstrates this by bonking her face against the leg of the kitchen table (she may be able to walk, but she's not good at deciding when to stop just yet), landing on her diapered butt, and then pulling herself back up to continue her path of destruction through the apartment. 

Carol scoops her up before Maria can. "Hey there, trouble," she says, and Monica beams, showing off all six of her teeth, and babbles happily at Carol.

****

They fall into a pattern: Maria really does appreciate the extra pair of hands, but she appreciates the company more, so Carol spends most of her free time with Maria and Monica.

Maria doesn't really know what Carol gets out of it. Friendship, at least; the two of them have to stick together. At least with Dr. Lawson in charge, they're not completely pushed out of the way, but still, female pilots, on a top-secret project? Knowing somebody has your back is a good thing. 

Carol herself is a good thing, too. They do a lot of talking, while one or the other of them paces up and down the living room with a grumpy toddler in her arms, and Maria's more impressed with the woman Carol has started to let her see than she is with the bad-ass pilot--and she's been plenty impressed with the bad-ass pilot. 

She knows about Carol's parents and brother, and how they don't talk to her anymore, because a girl has no business going to the Air Force Academy. 

Carol knows about how Maria's been struggling, because she doesn't want to send Monica to Louisiana to be raised by her parents. Monica would be fine there, her parents are great, but Maria's her mother. That's part of why this Pegasus assignment means so much to her--it's stable, with very little chance of a long-term deployment. As long as she's stationed here, she can keep Monica with her. 

What started as women having to stick together, as helping a fellow pilot out because she's in over her head at home, has turned into Carol being honestly the best friend Maria's ever had. 

She thinks Carol feels the same way, or maybe she just hopes so.

****

Maria needs some fun, Carol has decided, and so she hires a babysitter--the teenage daughter of one of the civilian scientists on base--and drags Maria out to a dive bar.

Maria is somehow not at all surprised that Carol has a favorite dive bar. This place suits her.

It's not all that bad, either; okay, Maria's the only black person in the bar, but it's not uncomfortable beyond the baseline of "surrounded by white people," and she's used to that.

They let men buy them drinks. Maria dances with a couple of the guys, knowing that Carol has her back if any of them get too handsy. 

They don't, and Maria's not sure if that's because she's giving off "single mom" vibes, or because of the way Carol's glaring at them. 

Either way, after dancing with a third guy, she drags Carol up on stage for karaoke. She lets Carol pick the song, and is totally unsurprised that it's Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation." It's not like she knows what cassettes have a permanent home in Carol's car or anything. 

Carol is... not the best singer ever, but she's damn enthusiastic, and it's fun to pretend they don't have any responsibilities waiting for them when they leave here. 

And when Carol belts out, "_And I don't really care if you think I'm strange, I ain't gonna change,_" just a little off-key, Maria finds herself thinking, _I hope you never do._

****

This might be a problem.

No, scratch that. "This might be a problem" has been the echo in Maria's mind for the past year, and it's been letting her push the situation to the side and ignore it. She can't keep ignoring it. 

This is _definitely_ a problem, and it only _might_ have a solution. 

If it does, Maria has no idea what it is. 

Carol and Monica are in the living room, "wrestling," which mostly means that Carol is letting a two-year-old climb all over her, shrieking with joy. "I winned, Auntie Carol!" 

"Yeah, you think you won," Carol says, "but you forgot about my secret weapon." She starts tickling Monica until the happy screaming reaches eardrum-piercing levels and the guy in the apartment next door thumps on the wall. 

"Okay, cool it, you two," Maria says. "It's almost time for dinner, anyway. Come help." 

There's a pizza in the oven--frozen, with some extra peppers and mushrooms thrown on to make it taste a little better--and when Carol comes in, Monica on her shoulders, Maria gestures toward a cutting board with a half-cucumber and a handful of radishes on it. "Chop those up for the salad?"

Carol nods, putting Monica down on a chair.

"I help," Monica announces. 

"Yeah, sure, you can help," Maria says, and sets the salad bowl in front of her before handing over a chunk of lettuce. "Can you tear that up and put it in the bowl?"

The bowl is on a big plastic tray that someone gave her cookies on last Christmas, so the debris will at least be contained. She might even be able to salvage some of the lettuce for the salad. 

Monica starts pulling the lettuce apart, a look of solemn concentration on her face. There's still plenty over on the countertop for Maria to add to the salad once she sees how much of what she gave Monica is usable. 

Right now, Maria's cutting up tomatoes, setting a few of the chunks aside in a bowl for Monica. The kid's no fan of salad, but if Maria gives her a few cut-up vegetables and a little dressing to smear everywhere (even, occasionally, on a vegetable), she'll eat them. 

"Hey, good work, Lieutenant Trouble," Carol says, and Maria turns to see that unexpectedly, Monica is managing to get some of the lettuce into the bowl. Her eye-hand coordination is improving practically every day; she's going to start _really_ earning her nickname soon. 

"So I rented some movies," Maria says as they work. "_Back to the Future_ for after she's asleep, so we can see what all the fuss is about--" Neither of them seems to make it to the movie theater often. Maria doesn't want to waste precious babysitting hours for a movie, but Carol should maybe go out and have fun more than she does. "--and the C-A-R-E B-E-A-R-S movie while we eat." 

From Monica's determined frown, she's going to learn to spell sooner rather than later, but at least it works for now. If she realizes her precious Care Bears are a possibility, she won't give them a moment's peace until they start the movie. 

When the food's ready, they move into the living room, Monica wedged in between them because she can't decide whether she wants to sit next to Mommy or Auntie Carol. 

Maria's kind of glad, because otherwise, she'd be sitting squashed against Carol on the love seat; Monica takes up more room than someone twice her size should. Now that there's another adult in the apartment regularly, Maria should replace the love seat with a couch, but other things keep coming up and taking her money. She should probably get on that soon. 

For right now, though, she likes the excuse to be close to Carol, which is the problem she has to solve, and solve _now_, before it stops being a potential problem and starts being a real one. 

It's a bad idea. It's a terrible idea. It could ruin her career--_their_ careers--and her best chance of making a good life for Monica. An Air Force veteran can go back to Louisiana, run a charter plane, do aerial photography for surveyors, fly a medical chopper, anything. 

A black woman dishonorably discharged for having a relationship with another woman is going to be _fucked_.

And that's if Carol's interested. If Carol isn't interested--and Maria's not great on reading signals from other women; she's only had a little practice at it, and the men she's dated haven't been subtle--then she could lose her best friend and Monica's Auntie Carol. 

She can tell herself that Monica's young enough she won't remember Carol for long, and it's probably true. Maria can't remember much of anything from when she was Monica's age. If Monica asks about Carol at all, Maria can tell her, "Oh, she was a friend of mine from the Air Force," and that'll be the end of it. 

Except Carol is already family, and Maria isn't taking that away from her kid. Monica's father is already totally out of the picture. He's not a bad guy: he's reliable with child support and makes sure Maria knows how to reach him if necessary. But he doesn't want to be Monica's family; he's never even seen her. 

He doesn't want a kid, and he doesn't want Maria, and while both of those things are fine--Maria made the decision to have Monica assuming she'd be doing it on her own--she doesn't want to drive away someone who genuinely does care about them both, even if it's not quite the way Maria wants. 

But this can't go on forever. 

Maria has all the common sense in the world when she's alone. She plans out methods to put some distance between her and Carol without ending their friendship completely. She rehearses ways to let Carol know all the things that have been in her mind for the past several months. 

Then she looks at Carol, and Carol's all she can see. All she wants to see. 

It's a problem, definitely. 

But solving it can wait until tomorrow, because there's a dumb cartoon in the VCR and a happy baby curled up between her two favorite people, and Maria's going to grab this moment and keep it, just in case she doesn't get too many more like it.

****

She's making a terrible mistake.

She's already made a terrible mistake, to be honest, because they went out to karaoke again and she let Carol drive, which means she didn't stop at one beer the way she does when she's behind the wheel. 

She didn't have enough to get drunk, but she's buzzed enough to be unwilling, if not unable, to stop herself from being stupid. 

While Carol turns on the headlights and starts the engine, Maria finds herself leaning close and saying, "You." 

Carol stopped at two beers and has been drinking Diet Coke ever since; the giggly giddiness she'd been showing when she was on stage with Maria hasn't survived contact with the chilly night air. She doesn't start pulling out of the parking space; she turns to look at Maria instead. "Me, what?"

"You are the third-best thing that has ever happened to me," tumbles out of her mouth before she can stop it. 

"Monica's number one," Carol says matter-of-factly, "and flying's second." When Maria nods, she does too. "Seems fair. You're the third best thing that's ever happened to me, too. Reverse one and two for me, but only because Monica's not my kid."

In every way that counts, she is, but Maria doesn't say that. "You don't understand." This isn't a declaration of friendship, and she's pretty sure that's how Carol is taking it. 

Carol just smirks at her. "We'll see," she says. "Let's go home. Did you call the sitter before we left?" 

"While you were in the bathroom. Her dad's going to pick her up, so you don't have to run her home." 

"Great." Carol puts the car in reverse and backs out. 

"What does 'we'll see' mean?" Maria asks once they're on the highway.

"It means we'll see," Carol says, because she may be the love of Maria's life, but she's also really fucking annoying. 

Shit, she probably _is_ the love of Maria's life. 

That's probably a bad idea. 

It's too late for that. It's too late to take back what she said. It's too late for anything except turning up the radio to make conversation impossible and looking out the window at the darkness. 

Katie, the babysitter, has cleared away a lot of the wreckage that Monica inflicts on the living room on a daily basis, and has her schoolbooks packed up for when her dad arrives. Maria pays her, adding a few extra bucks to her usual tip for the clean-up job that she's not going to have to do before bed.   
.  
"Are you going to need me next Friday?" Katie asks. "It's fine if you do, but if not, there's a party I wanted to go to." 

Maria glances at Carol out of the corner of her eye. Chances are pretty good that they're not going to be going out on the town together next week, after tonight. Maybe not next month or next year, either. "Nope. I'm staying home next week, so have fun."

"Okay. If you change your mind, or you want me for Saturday night, tell my mom at work." She tucks her pay into her purse and goes to sit where she can watch for her father's car. 

"Go check on the baby," Carol suggests. "I'll keep Katie company until her dad gets here." 

Maria usually waits in the living room with Katie, but she doesn't argue. She wants to look in on Monica, to see for herself that she's okay, even though Katie is a great kid and a reliable sitter. (It's going to suck next year when she goes off to college. She hopes Katie has a younger friend who can take over.) 

Monica's fine, drooling on her pillow with her teddy bear clutched in one chubby little arm. She barely stirs when Maria kisses her forehead. 

She stays in Monica's room until she hears the front door open, then close again a minute or so later. She can see the parking lot from the window; only one car pulled away, so Carol's still here. 

Time to face this, then. 

When Maria comes back into the living room, Carol's looking out the window herself. It means she can stop in the doorway for a moment and give herself permission to just look at Carol. The hot rollers only come out for nights like this, so the loose curls hanging down Carol's back don't match the image of Carol in Maria's mind, but she's wearing her favorite jacket, an old pair of jeans that fit like a glove, and both those things say "Carol" to Maria. 

There's a rush of feeling that she struggles to put words to, or at least words that don't sound like she took them out of some old novel, because all her brain will give her is, _This woman is so dear to me._

It almost knocks the breath out of her when Carol turns around, because just for a second, she sees an echo of her own emotions in Carol's expression. 

It vanishes, if it was ever there, as Carol says, "Is the lieutenant sleeping okay?"

"Yeah, she's great. Go in and say goodnight if you want." 

"In a little while," Carol says. "I'm good right now." She takes a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. Maria knows that look. It says, _I'm probably going to fail at this, but I'm doing it anyway. And when I fall down, I'll get up and do it again._

She doesn't know what in her living room could make Carol look like that. 

"I don't understand, huh," Carol says, quietly. "That's what you really think?"

Maria shrugs. "Do you?"

"I didn't for a long time. Not until tonight," she admits. "I knew what _I_ felt, but I wasn't sure about you, and now I am." 

"You sound pretty confident," Maria says, taking a few steps closer to Carol.

"I'm not." She laughs a little. "I'm scared shitless, how about you?"

She looks at Carol again and thinks again, _This woman is so very dear to me_, and says, "A little bit. But you've got my back, so I'll be fine," and knows it to be true. 

She's not sure which of them closes the distance between them, but then she's in Carol's arms, and that's what matters.

****

**Author's Note:**

> Title, like the series title and every title of fic in this series, is from REM's "You Are the Everything." 
> 
> I can be found [on Dreamwidth](https://mireille719.dreamwidth.org/).


End file.
